The Gift that Always Reaches Its Destination?: The Economy of Gift in Ulysses
Journal
NTU Studies in Language and Literature
Journal Issue
12
Pages
23-49
Date Issued
2003-06
Date
2003-06
Author(s)
Abstract
The motif of generosity appears at various points in James Joyce’s “The Dead” but is not dealt with in a laudatory way. The main character Gabriel Conroy not only seeks to seduce his wife by a deceptive tale of generosity but tips the maid a gift of gold to patronize her after she frustrates his efforts to charm. Instead of celebrating generosity, Joyce thus seems to poke fun at such a concept by laying bare the circular structure of the gift. The path of giving-in-order-to-get-back indicated in “The Dead,” to a certain extent, substantiates Jacques Derrida’s comments on gifts: the simple intention to give suffices to annul the very concept of the gift, for the donor’s intention “to pay himself with symbolic recognition, to praise himself, to approve of himself, to gratify himself” has already defied the spirit of the gift, which is displayed in giving with no strings attached.
Type
journal article
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